Are the Rams Going To Regret the Ty Simpson Pick?

A Rams season ticket holder called in to say what plenty of fans across Los Angeles were already saying out loud. Reuben Bane was on the board. Makai Lemon was on the board. Spending the 13th pick on Ty Simpson, with Matthew Stafford coming off an MVP season at 38, was 'a wasted pick.'

Rich, working through the segment on his own, refused to plant the flag. 'I don't know about it yet,' he said. The case for the pick, in his telling, requires patience the offseason news cycle is not built to extend. The Rams looked over the steering wheel. They picked a quarterback who is not going to play in 2026 unless something has gone catastrophically wrong, and even then only to keep him fresh. They left two blue-chip skill players on the board to do it. The fan's question, Rich conceded, is a legitimate one. Could they have traded down to 15 or 17 or 20 and still landed Simpson? Possibly. 'These are all legitimate questions to be asked.'

The alternative scenario, the one nobody is writing about yet, is the one that bends the conversation in the other direction. Stafford runs it back. The Rams win another Super Bowl. Stafford decides he wants to see if he can do it again, wins, and then hands the keys to a young quarterback who, as Rich put it, 'comes out of the box looking like Jordan Love.' Then the Rams become the Packers, and McVay's draft room becomes the model.

What the Rams' staff actually likes about Simpson, in Rich's reporting, is the part of the player that does not show up on a combine sheet. They love his recall. They love the way he can sit in the X's and O's. 'Oh, I remember when I looked this guy off in quarter three of game four,' Rich said, mimicking the kind of total system memory the Rams want next to McVay. 'He's got a similar brain tissue to Sean McVay,' he said, with a skill set the building values.

The verdict, for now, is incomplete. 'I will call this an overreaction,' Rich said of the Bane-or-Lemon-instead crowd, while leaving room for the inverse to age just as badly. 'It is entirely possible though. It's not out of the realm either.' Nobody, he reminded the audience, is going to bring up the draft if the Rams lose an NFC Championship game in February of 2027. The question is whether the pick looks like vision or like a luxury, and the only real answer comes in seasons, not weeks.